¡Obámanos!: The Rise of a New Political Era

¡Obámanos!: The Rise of a New Political Era

Hendrik Hertzberg

Language: English

Pages: 229

ISBN: 2:00260080

Format: PDF / Kindle (mobi) / ePub

Hendrik Hertzberg, celebrated political analyst for the New Yorker, watches the long presidential campaign of 2007 and 2008 as it unfolds to reveal the transformation of the Democratic Party, the meteoric rise of Barack Obama, and other seismic shifts in our national political consciousness. Hertzberg wrote about the events that culminated in the victory of Barack Obama in two venues, one Olympian and one immediate: his "Comments" for "The Talk of the Town" and the informal blog he began keeping on the magazine's Web site fifteen months before the election. &iexcl;Ob&aacute;manos! is adapted from both and framed by a new introductory essay.&iexcl;Ob&aacute;manos! shares the context needed to truly understand the events of the general election-the first in more than half a century in which no incumbent president or vice president was on the ballot-by first examining Bush's second term and the primary campaign. Hertzberg follows the central political players and rising stars while also looking at the issues that emerged as critical during the debates, such as health care, the war in Iraq, and our economic crisis. Through his documentation and analysis of the campaign's defining moments, we come to understand the current political landscape in a whole new way.Hertzberg's voice combines sharp observation, historical perspective, analytic power, and often funny polemic. He brings all these qualities to his chronicle of one of the most intense, exciting, and surprising campaigns in the nation's history, sharing how most Americans-including the New Yorker editors-came to identify a junior senator from Illinois as "a leader temperamentally, intellectually, and emotionally attuned to the complexities of our troubled globe." &iexcl;Ob&aacute;manos! heralds a new chapter in American politics.

on); it survived Cold War horrors like America’s support of Spanish Falangism and Central American death squads. Perhaps it can even survive the fervent embrace of George W. Bush. MATTERS OF LIFE March 25, 2005 Last week, Theresa Marie Schindler Schiavo, known to cable news viewers and talk radio listeners as Terri, was as ubiquitous as Elián González and Laci Peterson once were. Yet she was also hidden, obscured behind layers of political and religious posturing, legal maneuvering, emotional

historical: during the Second World War, industry (with prodding from organized labor) got around wage controls by offering workers health benefits in place of cash, thus saddling the United States with “employer-based” private health insurance—a system now in slow-motion collapse under the competitive pressures of globalization. The other is institutional: even though there has long been popular support here for universal, government-run health care, as there is in Europe and Canada, America’s

wouldn’t everyone welcome a moratorium on presidential glorification? Isn’t the United States a little too president-ridden, much as post-medieval Spain was a little too priest-ridden? Our capital city groans under the weight of obelisks, equestrian statues, and grandiose temples fit for the gods but devoted to the winners of presidential elections. “Presidential historians” populate the greenrooms of our cable news networks. Presidential suites sit atop Vegas hotels. Presidential libraries

nuclear explosion. There’s no cell phone reception so deep underground. In the press filing center across the hall, big TV monitors were tuned to CNN, not to mean old sexist MSNBC, but there were no monitors in the gym itself. No phones, no BlackBerrys, no TVs: it made one wonder if the gathering was being deliberately shielded from the outside world, where the networks were taking note of the fact that Obama had clinched the nomination. The gym was a set for a made-for TV movie. On one side of

which was clearly a success by the time Bill Clinton finished speaking on Wednesday night. On the other hand, it was almost as clear before the conventions as it was after that McCain needed to do something dramatic. My guess is that he would have gone with Palin. His need for a “game changer” was almost as apparent before the Democrats convened as afterwards. And the factors that forced him to abandon his Lieberman fantasy would have been the same. Would Obama have picked Hillary Clinton if